Anime blog that focuses on Yuri and School Girl Slice of Life Anime and Editorials
If you have recalled, I have written a review about Kyou’s arc several months ago. However, the visual novel contained a lot more plot, which was missing… The actual Kyou’s arc in the visual novel is a big emotional roller coaster ride towards the end of her arc compared to the OVA… Well heres why…
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It’s pointless now to write about Episode 12, so let’s go to the final review…
The major problem beside the less focus on Haruka (more of a source material issue than the anime itself) is the fanservice… Fanservice everywhere, but not on the level of more fanservice oriented shows like Kampfer. Its plot and fanservice was alot worse than this. Gives Purezza a new meaning.
Some complaints on the Anime focusing on other character’s plots and not on Haruka… These plots were alright and not outright bad… Actually, they are good except that they are not about Haruka like in the first season. The good thing is that the plot wasn’t lame at all compared to Kampfer, which is a piece of s*** (no offense) and had a stupid plot filled with fanservice, but yeah.
Give some credit when it’s due… this is a extremely sweet series mainly because of those Haruka and Yuuto moments. That alone is the major cause TV diabetes 1 in 4 males… The almost kiss is the biggest and cruel running gag of the season… but I approve Haruka fanservice… It’s a good mindless romance comedy, but you cannot expect much from it beyond it… thats all and certainly does not compare with Seitokai, which is a better comedy show material wise… IMO or even the plot-heavy romance titles.
With the Idol arc, Yuuto finally mans up… and now evidently in Episode 12, he actually said “take your clothes off?” Wow… and of course, Yayoi and Nozomi gets their butts kicked in the end.. It’s great justice, don’t you think?
Now moving on to the lack of Haruka. This is a big deal and a reason why this season is weak. Take this for example. Say you have a movie named Batman, but the movie have no Batman at all, but just Robbin filled with Fangirl stuff. Do you expect the movie to be good at all? The answer is no. This season suffers from this because of the reason mentioned.
Like always, Diomedea did a pretty good job with animating Nogizaka Haruka, so there isn’t really much to comment here, EXCEPT…. the excessive steam… Perhaps the DVD and the other broadcast will not have this?
Nothing have changed, except we are introduced to some new maids… including Alice-chan. Most importantly, Yayoi and Nozomi, jerkass managers who tried to take Haruka away, Touka, the most generic tsundere I have seen ever (with her plot having a uncanny resemblance of Hayate the Combat Butler!) and Himemiya Miran, the idol singer.
But then again, where did Haruka go in 6 of the episodes in the whole season?
While the content isn’t the strongest point of this season, the music still sounded pretty good… that no wonder it reached my top 6 on my Last.fm profile (no joking). The OP sounds more powerful and awesome than the last one, although the last one was catchy. The ED however, have them do some kind of new dance and also in super deformed mode… Well, yeah…
Also, the opening theme for the show within a show anime, Nocturne Girl Lacrosse Club also sounded good
For what I have seen, I only can give it a 81%, a B- (in actuality, a 78%, C+ if you really want to be a harsh critic) and I was slightly disappointed by the amount of fanservice, cocktease with the kissing and the lack of Haruka… The show had some strong points like music and most part animation, but content is lacking a bit underneath the fanservice and the lack of Haruka. The series IMO would have done better if they took out all the unnecessary and pointless fanservice… otherwise, it would have been better. Would I watch a third season? Maybe, but from watching this, I would have low expectations… which could mean that they would do better next time? Who knows…
Never trust the name Purity in a title ever… you know what that means now… More Fanservice and perhaps stop with the pointless arc sand focus what the show is actually about. ABOUT HARUKA AND HER SECRET GOD DAMMIT! Until next time….
and yes, I do approve of Haruka Fanservice… :p
8.1/10, B-
Actual: 7.8/10, C+
Well, this episode is just as funny… but what made it epic is… errr… Mafuyu confesses to Ken, which is totally unexpected… You got to remember this, Mafuyu is apparently the easiest girl Ken could get…
Besides from that, the episode starts with Ken (as Key-kun) talking to Yuki (Mafuyu) online and talking about his goal of being in the student council a year ago. Back in reality, they find out that Ken was sick, so they finally had a meeting without Ken. They talked about part time job like Chizuru working for a company and protecting a 1 million dollar yen check. Minatsu, baseball, Mafuyu working on her blog on games and boy’s love and lastly, Kurimu working at a nursery just to act like a child and then going out with Chizuru for a parfait.
However, they forgot the stack of paperwork they had to do, so they try to find the approval stamp (no, it’s not the FLAT stamp) in Ken’s bag, which that had alot of weird stuff. The phone rang ann Chizuru picks up the phone and Ken told what happened. Kurimu and Minatsu panic about something said on TV (with Singapore and the earth being destroyed.) and he mutes the TV. Ken tells them where the stamp is and they finished the work when evening came, that Ken usually do. Mafuyu suggested to visit Ken at his house. They went to the store to buy some things, which Lilicia was. Lilicia follows them secretly, when the Chizuru, Kurimu, Minatsu and Mafuyu finds themselves talking to two men, who disapproves Ken. They end up being them up, since they said bad stuff about Ken. Eventually, the went to his house and were cooking. Ken wakes up and finds out they were there…
Overall, it was a pretty funny and epic episode… never knew Mafuyu would confess at the end… well yeah… Also, the ending theme for this episode was hilarious… can’t stop laughing…
Too bad there is only one more episode of this… it was a very good ride…
9.5/10
Another filler attacks, but a rather decent one to say. Especially on a hot summer day when in real life, it’s only 20 degrees out and freezing. Well, Kobato decides to go to the Nursery, Sayaka decides to tell a story when they are airing out the futons about Fujimoto’s childhood when her father takes him in since he was a orphan. We was a loner and the children didn’t like him because of it. One event changed everything when two guys looking for the soccer ball and one of the guy fell on the sunflower plant. This gets Sayaka upset and hey apologized. They left and Sayaka ties the plant up with a pole. Then, Fujimoto started to play a song on the organ and children was singing… This is when he started to warm up…
Unfortunately Iroyogi got exhausted from the heat… and while Kobato was walking back, Kohaku call her over to offer Iroyogi beer… yep and he was excited about that… The funny part when Kobato and Sayaka was airing out the futons is Iroyogi became completely dehydrated…
I find it funny how Fujimoto doesn’t want everyone to know about his childhood… but it was too late.. Well, you won’t get very far in life if you become a complete loner and not being able to communicate… it’s essential.. Although he isn’t that quiet anymore, he is still very anti-social and doesn’t have any friends… wow…
Got to say, it was a good episode… but what comes next?
8.7/10
MyAnimeList clients are at their infancy. Before the API came out, MAL Updater was your only choice and it only worked on Windows. The problem is that not everyone used Windows and used different OSes. MyAnimeList is a staple for most anime viewers and bloggers out there who use it to keep track what they are watching.
If you recall a few months ago, I have complained there was a lack of a MyAnimeList Client for Mac OS X. I haven’t checked hard enough and there was a program called iMAL that allows you to update MAL… The only problem is the program is very unstable and every time I tried to use it, it crashes on me… and I even recompile it and it’s even more unstable. Another alternative is AniChou, which is open sourced. The only problem there is the interface looks like crap (except in Liunx) and it was difficult to install since I have to install additional packages to make it work on Mac OS X. With that, MAL Updater has way too much features, the interface is cluttered and it’s closed sourced, which isn’t good. However, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Unofficial MAL API made this possible since the APIs are alot easier to use than the official API and they are planning to add Manga support right after they made some fixes to some search bugs…
After I complained about not being a really good MyAnimeList client for Mac OS X and discovering a easier API to use, I went to work and created this. I used RealBasic 2009 to create this client and wanted to make as close to a Mac experience as possible without having to learn Objective-C and Cocoa (and I don’t want to spend time trying to fix memory leaks). I was able to at least get the most basic features to work after three days of programming (you can check out some of the early screenshots I made of the program in early development). It took that long since RealBasic was a little different from Visual Basic .net and I haven’t worked on that stuff ever since I switched to a Mac in late 2006. Just within a week, I added status updating with 2.x and you could add new titles to the list, update them or even delete them for the list.
However, by the time I have used melative for my live micro-blogging when I go and watch some episodes of Anime… so guess what, I have decided to add melative support to MAL Client OS X since media is all about experience. MAL lacks the ability to express what you want to say about a episode you are watching. This reduces the need to update both melative and MAL separately, when you can do it the same time. If you have nothing to say when you go update, it will just sync the information you updated on MAL to your melative library.
The reason I didn’t add any additional features like auto-sorting of media files and skinning support since it’s unnecessary. Most people would use AnimeSuki, IRC, or even licensed retail discs anyways, so I don’t see the point of MAL Client OS X do the work since you have it done already. Skinning support is a niche feature, especially on Mac OS X and Linux. Rarely, you will see any skinned programs on those platforms and it’s too Windows-like and make things more complicated. MAL Client OS X is all about simplicity and not all about features. Having a lot of features in the world don’t make your program any better if the implementation sucks and not easy to use. This is the reason I created MAL Lite, a simple, lightweight, minimalist client for Windows and Linux as an alternative. Along with it, I made a GUI for MAL Updater OS X scripts so it will be a lot friendlier and people can scrobble their anime while they are watching it.
There is a reason I used RealBasic over Adobe AIR. For one, RealBasic can make native apps and uses less RAM as a result. Adobe Air, on the other hand is notorious for using a lot of RAM and is not native. Also, I can access the OS features with RealBasic and do a lot more than I could in AIR…
The future… Once manga support gets added, I will start working on adding it to the program. Hopefully, the program will hit the final stages with version 1.0, and by then, RealBasic 2010 will be out with Cocoa support…
Yuuto’s pathetic self can’t get any worse when he actually believe the words Yayoi and Nozomi said and let them get away with their shenanigans with Haruka… They are trying to take Haruka away from you… are you possibly going to let them get away with it. The first half had him moping around… hopeless with depression. Mika and Shiina tries to help you and you push them away? There might be something wrong .
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This episode can’t get any funnier, but I will highlight the funniest parts. Kurimu start with telling a tear jerking story with a mother mouse giving all her cheese to her child that made her cry since the mother mouse died. Another instance when Mafuyu tells a story when she loses her memory and forgot all the sweet times spent with Ken. Ken says he loves her, but she treats him as a freak and when she regains her memory, he is dead? This causes him to complain…
However, Chizuru’s idea was alot more harsh. In her story, Ken was about to confess her love for Chizuko. When she came, she tells about her new boyfriend and how great and leaves. This leaves Ken crying. Another instance is when he leaves the school hopeless, a stack of books hit his head and he was put in a hospital with jhis memory lost. This left everyone but Chizuru crying… Then Chizuru gave another idea with Chizuko and Kenichi with old age, which Kenichi dies of something and Chizuko saying everything is her. This is where the funny part come when Ken, Minatsu and Mafuyu raged about Chizuru’s ending and Kurimu crying a puddle of tears. The most funniest line that came out of this:
Mafuyu can’t take that! Mafuyu will sue her.
– Shiina Mafuyu
There is always a minority of this tear-jerking story backlash like in this instance. I have seen it when Misuzu dies in the end causing some fandom rage and also near the end of Clannad After Story when they killed off Ushio… Fan dumb at full force… right?
Next, they perform their own tear-jerking story, but ended up being entirely funny because the way they done it… I couldn’t take their story seriously… Eventually, they gave up on it.
Soon, it was the end of the festival and… Chizuru is dressed in her sheep outfit again… Mokyuu~? Next, they have to go through a pile of lost items. When going through the stuff, Ken discovers someone panties… which caused everyone else to be disturbed… but he finds out that Mafuyu wasn’t wearing any…
Next, they worked quietly , except Ken who said a overly long monologue, which annoyed them… Next, he said something like a drama CD and another instance he mentions pokkoncho and Kurimu, Chizuru, Minatsu and Mafuyu start asking what is a pokkoncho with the Nico Nico Douga-like commenting in the background…Ken tries to change the topic, but they won’t stop asking…
This episode was extremely funny. I couldn’t stop laughing because the material was that good. It’s so sad I don’t know most of the references, but in the end, it was golden… This is probably the best slice of life comedy for the season and got better for the second half of the season… too bad there is two more episodes and I will pretty much miss it after once it’s done…
Don’t forget the Mokyuu~!
9.4/10
Now with the song selection done, here is the songs that people who are participating needs to play in Audiosurf:
1. Honda Mariko & Saito Yuka & Togashi Misuzu & Horinaka Yuki – Treasure
2.fripSide – only my railgun
3. Maaya Sakamoto – Magic Number
Before playing, you must add the [AAS-Holiday09] at the end of the title.The title should look like this:
“Treasure [AAS-Holiday09]”
To edit the tag, make a copy of the file first and right click > Properties. Click on the Details page and double click on the song title. Then do the change I have reflected in this example. You have until December 30th at 11:59 PM EST to complete your runs and you may redo them as many times you want since I won’t be recording any scores until then.
For more details, click Read More
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Fillers galore, we are yet hit with another filler episode. While not having reading the manga since I don’t really have the interest to do so, it was a good episode, but there are some flaws and pretty much cliched.
This episode starts in the start of summer and Kobato wants to go to the summer festival while she was bathing Ioroyogi. The flier flew off and somehow Natsuki got it and Kobato finds her with it. She hands it back and notices that her hands mere a mess. Natsuki gives a cloth to Kobato to clean her hands. Then, another girl Yukino trips and falls onto the ground while she uses her cellphone and they left. Kobato forgot that Ioroyogi was still wet and she squeezed the water off him. He was angry and about to spit fire, but couldn’t. While Ioroyogi was drying, Fujimoto told where that girl’s school was which was a all girls school. After she goes there and watch through the window, she finds Yukino and Natsuki, but gets caught by a teacher. Kobato runs and hide in the bushes and Yukino finds her while trying out a camera. They went to the pool area where Natsuki was working and handed back the towel…
Why do I need to tell you this… Well, the rest of the story is about Natsuki’s and Yukino’s friendship becoming distant ever since Yukino started to act strangely. In the past, they had matching phones and they needed a way to tell the phones apart. They got their charms and they exchanged it (Natsuki gets a snowman and Yukino a watermelon slice). With their friendship distancing, Natsuki decided to work harder in school. Not knowing that Yukino was working in a part time job to buy a new camera and finally got the money to buy one at a sale, Kobato goes to the mall and she finds Natsuki looking at the two other girls and Yukino. Without thinking, Natsuki said something that she didn’t intend to say, but it was hurtful.
You guys are so stupid! Even photographs that just mimic an advertisement can be seen as pretty good, so alot of people are mistaken about good photography…Even though you’re an amateur with no talent, you pretend you’re a pro. You’re pathetic
-Natsuki
That moment pretty much sums up this episode… Well, the accusation of Yukino being a poser is pretty lame, don’t you think. Also, the charm which Natsuki was panic about when the charm is missing go through the trash and with Kobato taking notice of it, helps her but finds it near a bucket… HOW DID IT GET THERE? It must be some kind of magic since it couldn’t walk off like that. Natsuki finds it and Kobato takes a picture of it and sends it to Yukino. When Natsuki meets Yukino, she reveals that she kept her charm on a necklace… thus their friendship is healed and Kobato gets another konpeito.
Although this episode is not that bad and was good… it was pretty much cliched… How many shows employ this kind of plot? Does anyone know. Another complaint I am hearing that Kobato is butting into others people’s problems, although it’s the thing she does best, or she wouldn’t be healing these people.
Another thing that bothered me is Yukino using her cellphone during class. Why would you use a cell phone during class? It seems like alot of teenagers in high school spend their time texting on their phones secretly during class while the teacher is teaching and high schools usually ban cell phone use… In college, they don’t even care, but it’s quite risky since you might lose important information on a topic. Yukino did not realize that using a cellphone camera will make a noise… I noticed all Japanese mobile phones does that, except my iPhone 3GS since I can turn off that sound by turning on the silent switch. A great way to get caught easily…
Is this the last of the Fillers? Who knows, but they aren’t that bad considering that I haven’t read the manga or have any interest to do so.
Not to mention, Kobato looks really cute in her new outfit, especially in her yukata…
8.8/10
2009 was a pretty dismal year for the economy in general, but not for Anime… I will be discussing several moments in Animes I watched that were good to the ones that are horrible. Let’s start with the bad, shall we.
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